This invention concerns tracking/locating systems for luggage handled by airline companies.
Handling of luggage by the airline companies faces particular problems, due to the far flung nature of the route system. If luggage is misrouted it can end up hundreds or even thousands of miles from its proper destination. Locating misrouted luggage in a timely fashion is important to customer satisfaction.
There has heretofore been proposed interrogatory-transponder systems for locating objects, as for example, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,266,925 and 5,214,410.
While useful in a particular location, these systems do not solve the above described problem with respect to airlines handling luggage--and quickly retrieving misrouted luggage--over a wide geographic area.